GREEN shoots or dried-up roots, the current recession appears to be having little or no effect on the young entrepreneurs of the future, who seem instead to be thriving on the current economic challenges.
Our would-be entrepreneurs are optimistic about riding out the recession and are responding to it by identifying new business opportunities and taking advantage of technology to give them the business edge.
So what is it about young entrepreneurs
that has them actively pursuing new business ideas and growth strategies, and taking the essential steps that will help them become stronger business people in the future, when older, more mature heads are drawing in their horns, pulling the purse strings tighter and waiting for the recession to bottom out?
It might be naivety in business, the lack of fear that comes from never having experienced a recession before, or simply that students and young people are used to living on reduced means and usually have no dependents that could hamper their ambitions.
Alison Robson suspects it's a potent combination of all these factors that gives wannabe businessmen and women the edge over their more mature counterparts. As executive director for Shell LiveWIRE, she speaks to hundreds of budding entrepreneurs and reckons they are at a stage of their lives that tends to have less risk; usually spouse-less, childless and mortgage-less they are in pole position to follow their dreams.
Former young entrepreneur and latterly chairman of Young Enterprise Scotland, Chris van der Kuyl says start-ups have a huge advantage over established businesses since they have nothing to lose.
He started his first business in 1992 at the back end of a recession and claims he was absolutely unaware of it. Now CEO of BrightSolid, van der Kuyl says he didn't care about the macro economy, he had an idea and was determined to make a success of it. "You can only go in one direction," he says, "and that is up."
According to research conducted by Shell LiveWIRE, 90% of those polled feel confident about making their business a success in spite of the recession. In fact, two thirds believe their business will perform slightly or significantly better over the next 12 months.
Some, such as the students behind Adspad.co.uk, believe that the naivety and inexperience of youth bring a lack of fear of what's happening in industry and, as such, a definite advantage.
So whereas an older head might happily accept the fact of business life that advertising and marketing budgets are the first to be cut when money is tight and thus look for opportunities elsewhere, Adspad founders Kilian Palop and Glenn Buchan saw only opportunity.
The youngsters knew that while big companies would be cutting ad spend, the smaller, smarter, more flexible and ambitious businesses would be trying to capitalise on the lower profile of their rivals, so this became their opportunity.
Adspad is a novel advertising concept that helps businesses target and earn money from students by providing eye-catching sponsorship on paper placemats for university canteens. Having first secured Aberdeen University as their launch outlet, Adspad's lofty goal is to be in every university in Scotland by Freshers' Week in September.
Twenty-year-old Buchan says that starting in a recession was a big consideration but they decided to see it as an opportunity rather than a threat. Sometimes older generations don't take as much risk as they should, he says. "If you wait around and do too much planning, nothing ever gets done. We knew we had the belief in our business to take it forward."
His bold view is typical of those interviewed by Shell LiveWIRE, one of the UK's longest running youth enterprise schemes, which identified that almost a third say the recession has actually made them more determined to succeed.
After concerns about funding, would-be entrepreneurs hoping to set up a business in the current climate say the biggest obstacle to overcome is lack of experience of living through a previous recession. But it's not putting them off.
Niall Slater, who just won a Grand Ideas Award for his new venture, says a good product idea makes the recession irrelevant. Like the Adspad guys, he insists the key to success is belief in that business idea.
As a student, used to living modestly and surviving on a low wage, Slater reckons that the bootstrapping approach to business start-ups comes as second nature to young entrepreneurs.
The 22-year-old founded Glasgow-based BrailleBand, a start-up company that uses technology to allow users to type in Braille rather than on a normal "qwerty" keyboard and which translates between digital text and Braille, despite being warned about the perils of launching a business in a recession.
"I intend to keep going with BrailleBand no matter what the country's economic circumstances are, and I'm determined to make a success of the business," he said.
The full article contains 837 words and appears in Scotland On Sunday newspaper.
